George's Brittany Diary

Previously in Georges Diary............

Editor’s note: In October 1888, Vincent van Gogh persuaded his friend Paul Gauguin to join him for an artistic collaboration in the now-famous yellow house at Arles. A stormy two months later, and van Gogh had sliced off part of his ear and shot himself. Gauguin had fled to the South Seas and fame and fortune. In November 2008, a fellow writer and friend came to stay at George’s Breton farmhouse, Ar Bihan Baradoz (The Little Paradise) Their collaborative relationship lasted just three days. This is our bloggist’s totally one-sided report on the time when De’ Ath came to Paradise:

November 1st:

Although the season of unwanted visitors is over, we are to receive a visit from an infamous non-paying guest.

Officially, Wilfred De’Ath wants me to be Boswell to his Johnson. He has already written an autobiography, but thinks the subject of himself is well worth recording for posterity in the third person as well as the first. His proposal is that he comes to stay with us to discuss the best way to record the milestones of his eventful life. I suspect that he will also be looking for a long-term and free billet in France. From what Wilf said on the ‘phone, his intended host – an elderly American living in Limoges- has been thoughtless enough to get himself run over and killed in Paris just before the great man’s arrival. From what I know about our impending visitor, it is possible that the American chose death before De’Ath.

A university contemporary and friend of such media hotshots as Richard Ingrams and Melyvn Bragg, Wilf had a glittering career in prospect when he left Oxford. In the good years, he was very successful within the BBC, interviewing, working and rubbing shoulders with the luminary likes of Brendan Behan, TS Elliot and JB Priestley. He also alleges that he bedded an equally impressive if highly improbable listing of female film stars and TV celebs, reference to whom would put any biography on very delicate ground. Wilfred walked out on his wife and children at the height of his success, and a long downward spiral saw him rubbing shoulders with thieves and vagabonds as a guest at a number of Her Majesty’s Prisons.

For the past decade, Wilf has made something of a living by writing about his murky past as he travels around France jumping trains and bilking hotels, restaurants and bars. He is an excellent if lazy writer, and searingly honest about his faults. This has endeared him to me as well as many readers of his column in the Oldie Magazine; it has also earned him the contempt of some of the more delicate and prissy readers, usually women of a certain age.

We met six years ago after being introduced by the owner of a second-hand bookshop in Avignon, and have corresponded regularly since. Although he likes to portray himself as an unscrupulous scoundrel, I think Wilfred is a sensitive and decent man, and I am looking forward to his stay with us.

Sunday 2nd:

Wilf is installed in the guest room, and has been telling us of his recent adventures. He is obviously shaken by the death of his American friend. He has written a very moving piece for his next column in The Oldie magazine, and read it to us over dinner. Strangely, he says that the recent demise of acquaintances Alan Coren and Miles Kington did not touch him as much as the sudden loss of his American friend. He thinks the reason may be that his famous friends were hugely successful and had made their lives complete, while the American died alone and unfulfilled, having been a failure in life. Perhaps that is also how Wilf sees himself, and I must try to be even more understanding and tolerant of some of his less attractive traits.

Monday 3rd:

I am beginning to find some of Wilf’s habits more than a little irritating. He obviously does not think it is the non-paying guest’s duty to offer to help with the daily processes of keeping the house warm and clean and its inmates fed.

When I suggested he might like to help me wheel a barrow or so of cut logs up from the woods yesterday evening, he looked positively grey and retreated to his room complaining of a headache. Early this morning, I heard him moving noisily around in the passageway outside our bedroom signalling that it was time for me to get up. When I had cleared out the ashes, laid and started the fire in the lounge and the wood burner in the kitchen and got the breakfast things ready, he came down the stairs and looked around like a Victorian gentleman inspecting a skivvy’s progress After I had stoked up the fire and served his coffee, he asked if I could ‘bear’ to make him some toast. As I had shown him where everything was and laid out a plate and knife and butter and several slices of bread in the kitchen the night before, I suggested he might like to do it himself. After a shocked silence, he slouched off, then called back to ask if toast was made by putting the bread into the ‘red machine thing’.

*

An almost surreal evening as we took Wilf to what is claimed to be the highest village in Brittany.

I would not want to live in a place which I cannot pronounce (which I accept is another apparently odd criteria when picking the perfect place to call home), but Le Feuillee is a pretty enough village. There is the usual impressive church which seems too big and ornate for the size and religious requirements of the commune, a couple of restaurants, and a small general store and bakery which makes excellent raisin bread.

As well as boasting the highest altitude, Le Feuillee has always seemed to us to have the most unfriendly attitude of any of the small communes in our area. In the half dozen times we had previously stopped off at the village, we had felt a certain frisson of disapproval. Going in to the bar was a bit like the scene in High Noon where Gary Cooper arrives in the saloon. The music and conversation did not suddenly stop on our entry, but our arrival was obviously of note.

Now it seems, according to Wilf, that the reaction of the people in the bar was not because we are English, but because we are straight. Our friend believes that La Feuillee is not only the highest village in all Brittany, but perhaps the gayest village in all Brittany.

The problem with hearing suggestions of this sort is that things one had not noticed before can take on a new significance when pointed out. Plush red upholstery and flashing fairy lights are not normal decor in a rural Breton bar, but we had put them down to the owner’s idea of sophisticated taste and how a chic bar in Paris might look. The way the male customers sat in couples with their heads close together had previously registered as nothing but after-work camaraderie to us. We had assumed the woman with the cropped hair, denim outfit and hob-nailed boots was glaring at us because we were foreigners. Whether or not Wilf was right, he enjoyed our discomfit that we might have got things wrong. In fact, he enjoyed the visit so much that he suggested we go back the following evening and leave Donella in the car while we posed as a couple inside.

Tuesday 4th:

Wilfred is really getting on my nerves. Not only do all conversations have to be about him and his feelings, they are not even conversations. His idea of an interesting discussion is for us to listen while he talks about his life. He is also a notorious name-dropper, and clearly completely wrapped up in himself. If I change the subject or mention any of my thoughts, he gives a brusque nod in acknowledgement then continues talking about himself without missing a beat. We sat for four hours in a bar at Chateuneuf-du-Faou this morning while he ran through what he called his Shagging Years. I lost count of the starlets and female celebrities he says he slept with, while Donella got bored and took the dog for a walk and the owner of the bar kept looking meaningfully at our empty coffee cups.

*

We saw another side of our guest this afternoon. I showed him the old ruined abbey in the forest near us, and he was obviously very affected by the atmosphere of a thousand years of worship. He stood with head bowed for a long time in front of the altar, and lit several candles. As far as I could see, he put money in the offertory rather than taking any coins out, so he must have been profoundly moved by the experience. Afterwards he said he wanted to believe, and found it spiritually satisfying if improbable to hope there could be a meaning and purpose to our lives.

Wednesday 5th :

Wilf has gone. It all came to a head this afternoon when he called me a bully. In an article after we met, he said that I had something of the pub bruiser about me, and I had not forgotten that. Outraged that he saw me as some common thug, I tried to grab him by the throat but Donella intervened. After a sullen evening, we dropped him at the ferry port at St Malo. In the terminal, he pushed his way to the front of the queue and disappeared without a word or glance back.

It irritates me when I am told that someone is ‘complex’, as if that makes them different or special or excuses bad behaviour. It seems to me that everyone has a complex character, and it is formed by a combination of inherited dispositions and life experiences. It just depends on how much people show their complexities as to whether they are seen as complicated and contrary or straightforward, predictable and simple to understand. But I do think that, as well as being a cantankerous old bugger Wilf is the possessor of a very convoluted character. I think he wants to be punished for being who he is, and that nobody else could dislike Wilfred De’Ath as much as himself. I have been accused of wanting people to like me. Wilfred seems to want nobody to like him, and works hard to achieve his ambition.

*

Sometimes it is the small and apparently unimportant things which enhance or detract from choosing to live abroad. This morning I clocked up Good Reason 985 for being in France at this time. On this side of the Channel we have not had to endure a month of immensely irritating and mindless nightly whizzes and bangs frightening our animals and disturbing our peace. I would lay a bet that most of the morons literally sending their money up in smoke and upsetting other people do not know who Guy Fawkes was. My wife is particularly incensed by this anti-social activity, and thinks a really good idea would be to round up the oafs who put fireworks through old people’s letterboxes and take pleasure in maiming cats and dogs, then invite them to be the guests of honour at bonfires across the land. Inside a Wicker Man bonfire, that is.

*

I am in Huelgoat to pick up a month’s worth of British newspapers from a friend’s pub. Apart from a good country pub and curry house (and of course our friends and some of our relatives) the thing I miss most from my past life is a daily British newspaper. We can watch and listen to the news from Britain, but it is not the same as being able to read the story behind the headlines.

Turning into the square I have to swerve to avoid running into Eddie Izzard. He has just emerged from the pork butcher’s shop and favours me with a nihilistic stare before flouncing off in the direction of the post office. It is of course not Eddie Izzard, but a local lady doing an unintentional but impressive impression of the comic and enthusiastic wearer of women’s clothing.

Brittany seems to be the European capital of lookalikes, and Huelgoat its headquarters. The owner of the creperie down the road is a spitting image of Robbie Williams, while a pocket-sized version of Clint Eastwood drinks regularly in the bar across the square in company with Rasputin the mad monk and Margaret Thatcher - had she become a bag lady instead of one of our greatest Prime Ministers.

The picture-postcard town of Huelgoat is one of the premier tourist attractions in Finistere, and not only because of its collection of celebrity doubles.

The name means ‘High Woods’ and the town is surrounded by thousands of hectares of ancient woodland, riven with well-maintained walks alongside streams and gorges and huge boulders. Huelgoat is yet another place claiming that King Arthur was a homeboy, and another local legend claims that the giant Pantagruel stubbed his toe in the forest and in a fit of temper threw the great rocks wide and far. I prefer to think the vandalism on a monstrous scale came about because he was on the way home from a pub crawl in the town. Apart from the forest, a lake on its doorstep and the host of lookalikes, Huelgoat is marked out by having probably the most bars and drinking outlets in ratio to the population in all Brittany, if not all France. The thousand or so Huelgoatians have no less than seventeen licensed premises to patronise, from standard bars and restaurants to a drinking den in the back room of a camping gaz shop. Even the two bakeries have bars for those who become overtaken by a savage thirst while queueing for the daily baguette. Although it is claimed that the number of bars and drinking haunts is to accommodate the thousands of visitors who come to explore the forest and try their hand at making the Trembling Rock do just that, it seems to me that a lot of the locals like to drink...and drink a lot.

Other claims to fame for Huelgoat are that actress Jane Fonda once cooked a galette for her then husband Roger Vadim in a creperie in the square, and just opposite lived the ancestors of American Beat Generation poet, novelist and artist, Jack Kerouac. The artist Paul Gauguin is said to have painted the lake from the attic of a shop just off the square, but as the shop sells painting and art materials, that could be a marketing ploy.

Some say that the town sits on a confluence of ley lines, giving it a mystical significance and special appeal to those of a spiritual nature. This may be true, but I think it might just be the number of bars on tap which attracts so many unusual people.

*

It is good to have a licensed outlet to suit whatever mood one is in, and today I am definitely in the mood for a visit to the Homme au Chapeau. The pub is named for its owner Roger Jennings, who I have seen in every state of dress and undress except without his cap. Once a dealer in London’s Paddington Green, Roger bought the defunct hotel some years ago, and set about filling it with his eclectic collection of antiques and bric-a-brac. I think he could be a really successful dealer if it were not for his reluctance to sell anything he has bought. Now every room and corner of the hotel is full with his stock, and it is difficult to move around the place for fear of barking your shin on a heavily gilded Louis Quinze table, or risk worse injury from a thoughtlessly placed chain saw.

The premises have become ever more chaotic since the departure of Roger’s wife Cherie. She is an American who ran the bar before they split up, though she wisely pretended to be Canadian during the height of the Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkeys Franco-American dispute over the invasion of Iraq.

I find the range of customers as interesting as the patron, and it is the only pub I know where so many of the customers are former members of the Special Air Services. One claims to have been a half-Colonel at the Hereford HQ of the SAS, and I suppose this is possible as he is certainly no taller than five feet six inches. If he was indeed such a high ranking officer that would explain why he is so bad at unarmed combat. The last time he tried to demonstrate how he could kill me with one finger, he missed and fell through the door into the street. It is peculiar how Brittany appears to attract people with a mysterious past, and according to the British landlord of a pub in nearby Carhaix-Plouguer, the majority of his French clients claim to have seen service in either the Foreign Legion or some other elite fighting force. Another extraordinary statistic is that the parents of every one of his customers were in the Resistance.

Ordering a beer and flicking through the entertainment pages of the Daily Mail I see that there is to be yet another television drama series about the life of Henry VIII. The essential difference in this one is that Bluff King Hal will not gain weight as he ages during the course of the series, as the woman director fear that would deter female viewers from watching until the end. Although he weighed in at 22 stones and had a 54 inch waist and had to be winched on to his horse towards the end of his life, the lady in charge says she wanted the king to be an appealing character so an exact portrait ( i.e. the truth) is not important. This statement says a lot about the way we regard historical accuracy and emphasis in Britain nowadays. However, I still find it strange that the producers of the series have not decided to omit the fact that Henry had a couple of his wives executed, which I would have thought likely to cause women viewers to find him less appealing...

Previously in Georges Diary............

Monday 27th October:

To the ancient capital of Brittany for a look at what could be our new home.

Having inspected more than a hundred farms, shops, castles, former cowsheds and other potential homes and found them all wanting, it seems to me we must think about other ways of living in France. Or even all over France.

Perhaps the reason we are not seeing any properties which appeal to us is because in our hearts we do not want to settle in one spot. There is so much of this big and diverse country we need to see before it is too late; paradoxically and as the months flash by, we seem to be becoming less interested in finding somewhere permanent to live. Rather than growing old in one secure setting, I increasingly like the idea of going on the run. I know we can’t escape the Pale Rider by keeping on the move, but the thought of having a good go at escaping his clutches is appealing.

What I like about a transient life is the idea of having to pay no commune taxes or habitation fees, water rates or electricity bills. I particularly like the idea of living a life off the radar, and being able to up anchor and move on when I get bored with the view from the window or porthole. I come from a long line of seafaring folk, and ‘First turn of the screw pays all debts’ was an expression often heard in my family circles. I know Donella is not so keen on the idea of a life afloat, but I have assured her that we can take the cat, dog and hens with us, and the birds of the air and all other freeloaders will be sure to zero in on us wherever we heave-to. Another bonus is that I will never be short of material for future travel books. I know that every British ex-accountant or schoolteacher who owns a Breton fisherman’s smock and cap and plays with a canal boat for a hobby and has travelled a bit of the waterways of France has written a book about his uneventful journeying, but I am a professional and reckon I could make a much better job of recording my impressions as we saunter down the Loire on our way to overwinter in the sunny south.

Another real bonus is that the boat we are to look at is already moored on the Nantes-Brest canal in the department of Ile-et-vilaine, so there would be no huge costs involved in shipping it by road to Finistere. We would simply steam up and moor at the nearest canal town to our mountain home, then make plans for casting off and disappearing into the sunset whenever the mood takes us. The trip to inspect the Vivienne will also allow us to see what Rennes has to offer, though I suspect I already know what we will find there.

Tuesday 28th:

As seems to be the norm nowadays, things have not turned out as I had hoped .

When I spotted the advertisement for the 32-foot riverboat, the asking price of 18,000 Euros appeared a bargain. The photographs showed a gleaming and spacious craft with rakish lines and in apparent mint condition. The owner is living in Spain and seems a nice chap. He said he was selling the boat as his children had grown up and didn’t want to go on family boating holidays anymore. I suppose that should have given me a clue as to the boat’s age, as some of the photographs showed young children messing around on board. In spite of their severe haircuts, big shorts and lack of tattoos or other body decoration, it had not occurred to me that the snaps were reminders of a long-ago holiday.

Like the children, the boat has grown older, and now looks more like an elderly lady who had had a hard life than a smart and attractive young woman the photographs showed her to be. There was grass growing from some of the joints on the deck, and most of the fittings on the superstructure seemed to be held together by gaffer tape. Down below, all the fixtures were of 1970s vintage, and there was an almost Mary Celeste air of desolation and abandonment, with a single can of baked beans on the table top and the door to the bathroom creakily swinging to and fro

When we arrived at the marina office, the severe-looking woman at the desk said that the alleged keyholder had retired two years previously, and that she had no record of where the boat was or even that it existed.

Rennes was also a disappointment, though, like the boat, it could hardly have lived up to my expectations. In spite of all my travelling and a fair understanding of history and the development of major centres of habitation, I always irrationally hope that the ancient towns we are to visit will have somehow remained, well, ancient. It is as if in some childish way I expect anywhere with a bit of history to have it on show, like one of those battles fought on bank holidays by men dressed as Roman Centurians called Gais Pudicus, but who in the week answer to Trevor and work in insurance.

No dancing nowadays on the Bridge at Avignon..

When we visited Avignon, I did not expect to see lots of people dancing around on a quaint old bridge; neither, though, did I expect to have to fight our way to the old walled town through miles of sprawling and sometimes obscenely ugly outskirts of tower blocks and tawdry shopping centres and those tragic commercial estates where the businesses have names as tritely jolly as the products they sell are tawdry and sad.

Arles as Vincent saw it when in a good mood...

When we arrived at Arles, I did not really expect to see the odd farm cart rumble slowly by as a man with a straw hat, ginger beard and a big bandage where his right ear should have been strolled to the nearest bar. But our visits to all these historic towns inevitably destroy any hope that somehow, they would still keep an echo of what they were famous for. I did not see or smell a single wedge of Rochefort cheese when we toured that town, not everyone in Nimes was wearing denim, and Chantilly seemed to have no more than its fair share of lace on show. Though to be fair, most Chantilly lace was made in Bayeux in Normandy.

Rennes, Ancient...

Because of the tourist brochures and in spite of previous disappointments, I expected to see my first half-timbered and gaily-coloured medieval building as we bumped down quaintly cobbled streets towards the river at the heart of Rennes. In fact, we sat for half an hour in a three-lane traffic jam outside a soaring selection of cathedrals to shopping, with the biggest and most intimidating topped with a massive C&A sign.

With a population of coming up for a quarter of a million and another half a million living around the town, I suppose we should have expected Rennes to be busy. I am sure it is a nice town to live or work in for the young or business-minded, but not for a couple of ageing travellers looking for a trace of history and the feel of what the town was once like and why and how it became the capital. Of course, Rennes and any historic and significant French town will be riddled with reminders of its past in the shape of preserved buildings and an adequacy of museums and galleries. But to get to them, one inevitably has to plough through a reminder of the worst aspects of how we live now.

..and Modern.

Perhaps in the future there will be holograms or Disney-like facsimiles near all historic towns and sites so people can get a proper feel of what they were truly like; until then, I prefer and choose to visit and write about the more modest French towns.

In the Carmargue last year, when we turned our backs on the distant derricks and rusting coasters, we looked across a haunting marshland that was basically unchanged for millennia. And it did just what is said on the tin...or what the tourist brochures would have you believe. There were white horses running free across the boundless flatlands, and the morning sky did turn pink when a thousand flamingoes flapped lazily away as a fisherman poled his punt across the shallow silver waters. The horses and the pink birds and even the aged fisherman with his characterful craft may well have been supplied by the regional tourist board, but it seemed the area was at one with itself and how it always had been ....and that just by standing there in dumb wonder, we had become part of that magical place and its past.

Wednesday 29th:

The idea of setting up home on a boat has not been soured by our visit to view the Vivienne.

On our way home from Rennes, we stopped off to explore the bay of St. Brieuc. This is the principal or at least the biggest town in the Cotes d’Armor department, named for a Welsh monk who evangelised the region in the sixth Century and established an oratory there. Understandably given its origins, St. Brieuc is twinned with Aberystwyth, and, more un-understandably, with Aghia Paraskevi in Greece. The last head count of Briochins claimed a population of nearly 50,0000, which is normally enough to put the town in the stay-away category for us. But St. Brieuc sits at ease with itself overlooking an estuary in which two rivers combine before entering the English Channel. The vast Bay of St. Brieuc is freckled with interesting and secluded villages on cliffs, headlands or abutting sandy beaches, and we spent the night at the confluence of a posh marina and a very not-posh commercial docks.

What we liked about the port of le Légué was the way the million-euro yachts bobbed disdainfully alongside unconcerned and very rusty old scows, and the trendy eateries rubbed shoulders with derelict warehouses at the business end of the port. One day those warehouses will have become flash apartments, each costing more than the value of the port a couple of hundred years ago, but for the moment they lie empty and unvalued. Mountains of gravel and walls of cement bags line the dockside, and smack between them and the expensive yachts is our idea of the perfect waterside pub.

The Seagulls is a PMU/tabac, which means you can buy your fags and have a drink while laying a bet on the next race at Longchamp. The nicely distressed bar overlooks the water and is staffed by the sort of seen-it-all and no-nonsense but good-hearted barmaids that cannot be beaten for crisp service with a smile anywhere in the world that we have travelled. Outside we found that satisfying contradiction of smarty yachties and weatherbeaten deckhands and wharf rats you find in waterfront bars of a certain type.

As we sat with a drink and dusk fell, the terns obeyed their job and name description and wheeled and turned overhead, while a solemn line of cormorants pumped through the air on their way home after a day’s work. These big and serious –minded birds fly in a very straight line, and I have often wondered why we say ‘as the crow flies’ rather than ‘as the cormorant flies’. Most crows I see do not fly in any thing like a straight line for long.

Not wanting to go to bed, we took an after- dark drive up the hill and through the old quarter of St. Brieuc. The inviting lights of satisfyingly seedy-looking bars drew us through the empty streets as a police car pulled up to move on Dixie’s Midnight Runners and their assorted dogs. It is only in provincial France that you see this sort of grungey and somehow old-fashioned wanderer who wears his mismatching assortment of old clothing with such panache. Bib and brace overalls with beret and neckerchief are the permanent fashion, and the hair is braided or cropped or even violently coloured and groomed 1970s punk vintage. The wearers generally cause no harm and add colour to the streetscene, and their dogs always look well fed and amiable. They also have the great appeal of not trying to sell you a copy of the Big Issue, and can generally play the musical instruments with which they solicit your spare change.

As we settled down outside a bar with a coffee and calva nightcap, a sign-written van pulled up and solved a dispute which has been going on for two thousand years between opposing French and British forces. The name of the carpenter owner of the van was writ large on the side panelling, and showed that, contrary to long-held English conviction,

(Eric) God is a Frenchman.

Thursday 30th:

Refreshed after our overnight at an excellent quayside hotel, we returned home to the mountains. What they like to call nowadays the hotel Experience is important if you travel often and can’t get a freebie because the manager has never heard of you or cannot be persuaded that you have arrived as an anonymous reviewer for a prestigious guide.

On our personal rating system of one to ten, the Grenier à Sel must rate about eight or a bit more. The thing about hotels is that though basic facilities like glass in the windows and a bed in your room must be a given, the sort you like to stay in should be your business and a matter of individual taste. As with restaurants, you can really only compare like with like, and make judgments based on what you think makes a good one. Some travellers like a modern and anonymous hotel with all the facilities and no character. Others like a more relaxed and even louche establishment, and will put up with minor inconveniences like a non-working lift in return for a feeling of place and presence that marks a hotel that, like an experienced older woman, knows its stuff.

As to facilities, some people will pay through the nose for drinks from a mini-bar, with the Mark IV Corby trouser press and a soft porn channel to hand. We like a hotel with a roomy room and hopefully a pleasant view, a sensibly priced restaurant and a late-serving bar. A comfortable full-sized bed (i.e. not a single masquerading as a double) is or should be in place, but apart from the basics and for me, just about the most important thing is the shower cubicle rating; even more so, the shower head manoeuvrability tog level.

I have been in- or tried to get into- shower cubicles which would make a veteran coalminer claustrophobic. I have been in shower cubicles that have rat trap doors which threaten to part a man from his most vital appendages just for the fun of it. But the thing most likely to goad me into a raving fury is a dodgy shower head. A proper shower head can be slid up and down to the right level for any height of guest, or any part of the body or head he or she wishes to shower. A proper shower head can also be adjusted to spray at any angle. A fixed and non-negotiable shower head is a curse on humanity, and unless you are able to perform a legs-akimbo hand-stand in a very limited space, it is also a threat to health and safety of yourself and those near to you. The Grenier à Sel was comfortable and clean, with a corking waitress, good food, a decent -sized bed, and a fully rotatable and adjustable shower head, so passed our test with flying colours.

*

An almost surreal -even for us- experience on the road out of St. Brieuc.

Realising I had fallen for a typical French road authority trap and taken a wrong turning by actually following the directions on the sign, I pulled into a driveway to do a three point turn. Then I realised I was at the end of a queue, and another car entering the drive blocked my escape route. Five minutes later and after three decades of messing around in France, we were sitting at a hatchway and about to undergo our first Drive-In-Bakery experience. Purists would be outraged, but it was somehow heartening to see France taking an American invention and French-ising rather than, as with MacDonald’s, franchising it.

As we watched in fascination, the driver in front stuck his hand out and took delivery of an obviously oven-fresh baguette and sped off. Shuffling up to the window to ask directions to get us back on the road home, we thought it only polite to buy a brace of giant almond croissants....

Previously in Georges Diary............

Wednesday October 1st:

Woken by the sound of gunshots, I looked at the bedside clock and remembered there is a seven ‘o’ clock in the morning as well as the evening. Feeling obliged to investigate, I stumbled to the window and took in a bucolic panorama which would have made a fine illustration for Keats’s salute to Autumn.

A fire-red dawn approached, and the coming light revealed a coverlet of mist resting gently on the craggy peaks of the moors above. Another cloud drifted like woodsmoke through the forest far beyond the rooftops of the cottages across the lane. All in all, it was almost striking enough to make me want to get up and go out.

Leaning from the window, I saw two cars parked by the old stone cross which marks the start of the track up to the moors and mountains. The hunting season has obviously begun, and it looked as if the owner of one of the vehicles has been keeping a record of his successes in the manner of a wartime fighter pilot. Even at this distance I could see two boars’ heads and at least a dozen pheasants had been painted on the driver’s side. Dressing hurriedly, I set out to discover who was shooting at what, and to ensure that our, dog, chickens, cat and fox were safely out of the line of fire.

*

At the calvaire, I saw that rather than listing all the wild animals the driver has slaughtered, the car was actually a mobile mural. The driver’s side carried skilfully drawn profiles of a host of wild creatures, while the whole of the nearside (including most of the windows) was devoted the representation of a sylvan glen, with the principal animals dancing in joyful harmony to the pipes of the great god Pan. As another fusillade echoed around the moors, I reflected on how this sort of ambivalent attitude could happen only in Brittany.

In Normandy I know of villages where there are more members of the hunting club than male adults. In some communes, old women and babes in arms are on the list. At fishing lakes, participants would laugh at the idea of using a fly and skill and patience to lure a trout. They prefer multi-hooked rigs alive with dozens of maggots, and would shoot fish in barrels if they could.

Here in Brittany it is more about the art of the hunt than the easiest and speediest way to kill wild creatures. On a recent visit during the hunting season, we went for a walk in a forest and thought we had stumbled on to the set of a Gallic film version of the Robin Hood legend. A continuous fanfare of horns blared out , and we saw one man swinging from a branch as he tootled away. The added noise of dozens of figures in picturesque outfits obviously chosen more for dashing sartorial effect than camouflage crashing through the undergrowth and bew-hallewing for all they were worth had obviously frightened every living creature bigger than a mouse from the area. But did they care? The boys were obviously there to literally make a song and dance of the day, and not concerned about going home laden down with evidence of nature red in tooth and claw.

The climax of our walk in the woods came when we emerged into a clearing and saw a giant boar looking benignly at us from a cottage garden. The great beast was surrounded by a menagerie of goats, ducks, dogs and other domestic animals, and all seemed at ease with their giant companion. When an elderly lady came out of the house and we asked about the situation, she explained that the boar had taken refuge in her garden some years ago after being frightened by the hunters’ hullabaloo, and was now one of her pets. Sometimes, she said, the hunters would stop off and feed Gaston, and they had become as fond of the beast as she had. Mind you, she added, having a wild boar as a pet had not put her off the delights of roast pork...

Thursday 2nd:

A significant advance in anglo-franco culinary detente.

Last week our neighbour Alain Le Goff ran out of bread, and actually agreed to accept one of Donella’s home-baked loaves. I also told our other neighbour Jean-Yves that I was making some celery soup, and he asked if he could try a bowl. Unlike Alain, Jean is a well-travelled man and obviously not frightened by the idea of experimenting with exotic foreign foods.

Friday 3rd:

Our attempt to bridge the chasm between our two nations visavis attitudes to food and cooking has not been a complete success. When delivering Alain’s daily egg, Donella found a pile of familiar-looking breadcrumbs along the top of his garden wall. Even at this time of year they had been left strictly alone by the hundreds of local wild birds, which proves that the distrust of British cuisine goes beyond even the human population of France.

Saturday 4th:

A classic example of the triumph of hope and ambition over logic and any shred of common sense this morning when we learned someone had bought an old bar and restaurant in a village near ours. The locals say it has not been open for a decade, and closed because of lack of available custom.

As we drove past I saw a couple standing by a pile of rubble inside the bar. They were holding small paintbrushes and large tins of paint, and had the look of Hansel and Gretel before they found the gingerbread house. When I climbed over the piles of old plaster and wood and stone and asked them in French if and when the bar was re-opening, the faces of both took on that rabbits-in-the-headlights look which meant they had to be Brits. As they seemed happy to tell me in English, they had no idea of the re-opening date as there had been a dispute with the builders. They were also having a problem doing a deal with any local breweries and suppliers but their plan was to create a ‘fusion’ pub, which would attract British and French customers from far and wide. Apart from not speaking French, neither had a shred of experience in any business, let alone the hospitality business, but both said they liked having people to dinner back in Surrey. The menu would be an artful blend of French and British delicacies, and they hoped it would prove a popular addition to the recreational facilities in the area.

As we drove away and I reported to my wife about the project, I thought about the irony that in spite of all the doom-laden auguries, the new pub might just be a raging success. The paradoxical thing I have found about British-run businesses in France is that those which seem sound often fail, and those which would seem to stand as much chance of being a hit as a bacon factory in Haifa often survive - and even prosper. It may be that the gods look after those who seem most in need of help, or maybe it is the equivalent of Sodd’s Law in action.

French Factoid: Many thousands of Britons try to start up businesses in Brittany and other parts of France each year. The failure rate is said to be around 98 percent, and the longevity of the average affair around two years.

Sunday 5th :

A full moon tonight, and it was eerily like broad daylight when I walked up the track to give the fox his supper. A blackbird was working the ground, and when it took off it almost collided with a bat. High above, a buzzard was circling over a field in which a trio of beef cattle were grazing as if it were mid-day. It is said that hunters’ moon derived from the clear skies and full moons of October, when migrating birds present an easy target for the men with guns below. As if on cue as I thought about this, a steady flapping signalled the approach of a skein of at least a dozen geese heading south for warmer climes. Earthlocked, I stood and watched in envy as I wondered where they were going... and how many would get there.

Monday 6th:

Reason 4,679 for living in rural France, particularly if you are an ageing male with a touch of prostate problems.

Walking Milly deep in the woods surrounding the ancient ruined Abbey at Le Relecq, I was relieving myself with no small relief when a huge Labrador came bounding around a bend in the track. He was followed shortly after by a stunningly attractive middle-aged woman. For a moment I stood frozen in the embarrassing ( for me) tableau, then turned away and did myself some agonising damage with a hastily pulled-up zip. The woman stood calmly watching and waiting till I had stopped groaning, then asked if I was okay and if there was anything she could do. When I assured her that I was no longer hung up, we chatted for several minutes about our dogs and the weather and the global credit crisis, then parted on good terms. Madame said she hoped my little thing would get better ( by which I hope she meant the wound from my zip) , and even offered to give me a herbal remedy for prostate peculiarities if I called at her cottage in the next village.

In Britain and despite our let-it-all-hang-out society, I do not think the proceedings would have taken the same civilised form.

Tuesday 7th:

Another non-paying guest has heard about the quality of handouts at Madame East’s takeaway. When I went outside for a final look around, the biggest hedgehog I have seen was munching its way contentedly through a dish of dried dog food that Donella leaves out for any passing or resident creatures who fancy a midnight snack. The hedgehog looked at me as if to ask what my business was, then calmly continued with its supper. When I told her about the new lodger, Donella was thrilled, but I can see what is coming.

Wednesday 8th :

As I expected, Little Paradise is living up to its name as far as our new boarder is concerned. Virtually as soon as dawn broke, I was put to work on building special quarters for the hedgehog, and he or she now has a purpose-built feeding station, crafted by me from what was a perfectly good washing-up bowl. I was also despatched to Super U with a long list of special foodstuffs, including a whole hand of bananas, a bag of best raisins, two packets of butter biscuits and a family- sized box of Le Kellog’s Fruit et Fibre.

Thursday 9th:

Donella has gone to England to help our eldest grandson celebrate his tenth birthday, and I am toutes seul, as the locals say. Obviously concerned that I would starve if left alone, Alain arrived this morning to present me with a freshly-cooked beetroot. After instructing me in the arts and crafts of peeling, slicing and eating it, he noticed Hedgehog Hall and asked what it was for. When I explained that it held dishes of fresh fruit intended to attract our new guest, he said that he had heard hedgehogs made very good eating if fed on grain and then purged before baking in a mud ball over an open fire. He offered to give Donella a demonstration on how to skin the hérrison, but I said I knew she was not that keen on little pricks.

*

The third visit of the day from our nosey neighbour. To be fair, I do not think he is as much nosey as lonely, and the antics of the weird foreigners across the lane offer him endless fascination. And with Donella not around, I suppose he thought my activities would reach even greater levels of madness. After he had gone through the now traditional ceremony of looking at whatever I am doing while pushing his cap to the back of his head, blowing out his cheeks and doing a very good impression of a very bad mime artist registering complete and utter astonishment with his body as well as face, he asked why I might be taking leaves from a wheelbarrow and spreading them on top of the millions already in residence on the ground. Was the carpet of leaves not thick enough for my liking so that I had to import extras? After trying to decide whether or not he was joking, I explained that I was merely conducting a hands-on survey to establish parameters for a competition with my wife.

When he managed to look even more perplexed, I said that I did not wish to appear anally retentive, but I needed to do some research as to how many leaves would fairly fit into a wheelbarrow. As a result of the experiment he had just witnessed, I now knew that a decent-sized armful amounted to around four hundred large leaves. With five armfuls to the barrow, that meant we would be wheeling two thousand leaves on each trip to one of the compost heaps dotted around the grounds. As with sea shanties and work songs for workers on the land, my wife and I would make lighter work of clearing the carpet of fallen leaves if we set up a little contest. I have pinned a large sheet of paper to the kitchen wall, and each of us will make an entry of the barrow loads we have shifted each day. At the end of the competition, we would merely have to do a simple multiplication sum to learn the total number of leaves cleared up from the two acres of deciduous trees surrounding the driveway. Obviously, Donella had shorter arms and smaller hands than me and also the smaller of the two wheelbarrows. Thus she would be collecting fewer leaves than me, but I would not be so petty as to point her advantage out to her.

Having explained the rules and regulations of the Great Leaf Gathering Contest , I invited our neighbour in for a cup of coffee. He said if it was all the same to me, he would rather have a glass of my home made apple brandy to help him absorb ( I think he meant make sense of) all I had said.

Sunday 12th:

The leaf gathering competition is on hold. I came out of the house this morning to see we had had an overnight fall. It had been snowing leaves, which means the area I had cleared yesterday looked exactly the same as before I started. I have now revised my estimate of how many hundreds of barrow loads it would take to clear the grounds, and we may just decide to leave the golden carpet where it is until next year.

*

Donella is back from her visit to England, and came staggering down the gangplank of the ferry towing the big suitcase on wheels that had been empty on her outward journey. Like all expatriates, we miss certain delicacies that are either too expensive or too rare in our new homeland. So, like an ambassador bearing exotic gifts from a faraway land, my wife is laden down with jars of Marmite, packets of custard, tins of proper baked beans and bars of real milk chocolate. Of course, many middle-class ( or as we would say snotty ) Britons who have never lived in a foreign land would mock us and our expatriate friends for missing these British culinary delights.

What I find irritating is that those same people would have nothing but sympathy and even admiration for French people living in England who yearn for a fresh baguette or a round of ripe Camembert. Of course, any French expatriate would find these home favourites with ease anywhere in Britain, as we are anything but unadventurous as to what we eat and sell. We are also not afraid of competition, whereas in twenty years of living in and travelling around France I have never ever seen a foreign cheese of note in any supermarket. The exceptions are Edam and Emmental ( the French-made variety, naturally), and when one thinks of the lack of taste in either of those two brands, I think my point is neatly made.

*

Our drive back to Finistere from St Malo was made less enjoyable after being buzzed by a number of groups of lunatic motorcyclists. They are an increasing menace on the roads of France, as, if that is possible, the members of these packs have even less road sense and skills than the average French car driver. They delight in roaring past cars in columns, and weaving in and out of traffic at the most dangerous times. They also have their own sign language and supposedly secret signals for when groups meet, and obviously like to think of themselves as the sort of non-conformist free spirits seen in American road movies.

In fact, they will all work in boring jobs during the week, and, being French, are actually well mannered and deferential when you meet them off their bikes. We recently stopped off at the picture-postcard town of Josselin, and headed for the restaurant and bar area. On the corner of the square was a 1950s American theme bar with the juke box blaring and huge photo-montages on the wall of Marlon Brando as the rebel biker in The Wild Ones. Although there were a couple of dozen heavily-customised motorbikes lined up in the street outside, the bar was empty and we found all the bikers sitting down for a long lunch in the posh restaurant next door.

Although they look the business, I think from a British or American perspective, the members of this new fashion would be seen as not so much Hell’s Angels as Hell’s Nancy Boys.

*

An early evening visit from Alain, who was with an equally aged friend from another village. Alain said they had come to welcome Donella back to Paradise, but I suspect he had brought his friend to prove that Alain has not been making up the stories about his mad English neighbour. The pair arrived in the copse to find me photographing a fine example of a stinkhorn mushroom.

I explained that the pahallus impudicus could shoot up to as much as ten inches in length in just a few hours and was given its name by a Frenchman with a sense of humour, and that the country name in my part of Hampshire was Old Man’s Dick. After looking at the huge erection wistfully for a few moments, Alain’s elderly friend said he did not know about England, but in this part of France any old man would be proud to have something that size and rigidity named after his own wedding equipment.

Previously in Georges Diary............

Sunday 14^th September:

To Callac in our neighbouring department of Cotes d’Armor for an Autumn Fayre, staged by a magazine aimed at British expats. The Central Brittany Journal is an excellent and very informative though informal organ it is hugely popular with Brits living here, planning to, or just interested in this part of France and finding out what it would be like to become a resident foreigner here.

Sunday was a good day for putting on the commercial Harvest Festival celebration of chutneys, jams and home-made wine and the results of other peculiarly British activities at this time of year as it guaranteed a huge turnout of bored Brits. Callac was also a shrewd choice for the venue because of its location at this end of the region, and the high local Brit headcount. It is still, however, a very Breton place as many farmers choose to retire here and at the weekly market the lingua franca reigns. Attractions include a Roman bridge and a renowned boulangerie and tea rooms, but Callac was one of those places we disliked on sight... and with absolutely no justification.

It is surprising how often we (and perhaps others) arrive in a quite inoffensive town and immediately find it unappetising. Perhaps it is something ethereally malignant in the air, or an off-putting juxtaposition of architectural features or street layout. Or It might be because of a bad experience on the road in to the town, or indigestion.. or just because one is in a bad and unresponsive mood. As with a restaurant at which we have had a rotten meal, I find the fairest thing to do before condemning any town is make a repeat visit. I have now apologised to Callac for judging it unfairly, and it has grown on us.

The rather grubby outskirts display its railway town history, but the centre is a pleasant place to be. There is an interesting and unusual use of brick on many of the chimney stacks around the town hall, and the church looks like it was built in stages from the Perpendicular through Norman to Victorian Neo-Gothic. But it strikes me as an honest sort of place, and somewhere one could become fond of in spite of its blemishes , just as a parent with an ugly child.

As the Brits flooded in and followed the traditional custom of filing past all the tables and looking but not buying, I reflected on how many of them were happy to have come here to live, and how many of the newer arrivals would stay. There are, as far as I know, no precise statistics for how long on average British expatriates remain in France till death or return to the UK or redeployment elsewhere. Generally, it is reckoned that the first two years is the crucial period; as with the make or break point with new business and lethal fevers, if you get past the critical stage it is probable that you will survive and stay on. Of course, some Brits arrive afire with enthusiasm and excitement and depart with disillusionment and debt in a very short time. Others stay on because they cannot afford to go home, or even because they do not want to admit they made the wrong choice by coming here to live. Many, though, adapt and survive and even prosper, though surprisingly often not for the reasons they thought they would.

Wednesday 17th:

We have been staging our own harvest festival, and it has been a very subdued affair. All round, our attempt to live to a degree off the land has been a disaster. Had we been real country people and relying on the fruits of our vegetable patch for survival, we would now be looking down the barrel at a long and very lean winter. Nowadays, the most rural Bretons only have to nip out to the nearest Super U or LeClerc to stock up on the miserable range of vegetables that the French think suitable to put on one’s plate, but it would have been almost a life and death affair for the people who lived in Lesmenez a couple of centuries ago.

For us newcomers, the combination of the rainy and mostly sunless summer and the X factor of living at this height on unfamiliar soil has combined to make my wife look a complete amateur at growing food. It has in the process given our nearest neighbour another reason to set his wizened features into that familiar told-you-so expression.

When Alain Le Goff said it was impossible to grow tomatoes in this bit of Finistere, I thought we had him. For years my wife has been coaxing the biggest, baddest love apples from some really unyielding earth and strange situations. To give her a real edge, I spent hours constructing a luxury home for the dozen plants we had specially imported from England. My purpose-built tomato nursery was constructed of the finest materials, and cunningly built to be not only portable, but on a turning platform to catch every available blink of sun. If Richard Rogers had designed it, my construction would have won a prize for architectural excellence. Though perhaps not, as it was also very functional as well as weird -looking. But the sprites of the mountains were not in agreement that nature should take its course. Last week I sent an e-mail to our closest friends announcing the arrival of the singular East tomato; it was accompanied by a photograph of the sickly child to explain why my super-strength green tomato chilli chutney would come out in a limited edition only this autumn.

Elsewhere, it has been just as feeble a reward for hundreds of hours of work. Our corn on the cob plants are not as high as even a midget elephant’s eye, and the strawberries have failed to show. We planted hundreds of seed potatoes, and the earth has given up no more than a plateful.

Meanwhile, our neighbour Alain has used his insider knowledge and experience to grow only the most suitable vegetables in his huge plot, and is now relishing the fruits of his summer labours by acting like a lady bountiful. For weeks he has been arriving with wheelbarrow-loads of leeks or spring onions to swap for our eggs, and now he has gone into overdrive.

Giant pumpkins materialise Tardis - like outside our kitchen door alongside monster marrows that our neighbour claims are just Breton-sized courgettes, and it has got to a point that we have had to resort to subterfuge to keep our end up. As with the usual arrangements between vegetable gardening neighbours, the deal was that we would avoid growing too many of the same varieties, and exchange our unduplicated surpluses. As our first year of living off of Finistere soil has been such a disaster, we have been reduced to buying our half of the bartering deals just to keep our pride and not admit that Brits cannot grow vegetables in any but the most benign conditions.